Hybridity, mimicry, and ambivalence

3. The notion of Ambivalence

For Homi K. Bhabha, “colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable ‘Other’, as a subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite” (Bhabha1994: 122). He is the foremost contemporary critic who has tried to unveil the contradictions inherent in colonial discourse in order to highlight the colonizer's ambivalence with respect to his attitude towards the colonized Other and vice versa. He continues: “The menace of mimicry is its double vision which in disclosing the ambivalence of colonial discourse also disrupts its authority. And it is a double vision that is a result of what I've described as the partial representation/ recognition of the colonial object.” (Bhabha1994: 126)

In his essay “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” Homi Bhabha locates ‘mimicry’ as one of the most elusive and effective strategies in colonial discourse which centres around civilizing mission based on the notion of ‘human and not wholly human’. In the pretext of this civilizing mission Charles Grant propagates “evangelical system of mission education conducted uncompromisingly in English language”(Bhabha1994: 124) in his “Observations on the state of Society among the Asiatic Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain” (1792) and Macaulay visualizes the bright future for the colonial rule in his "Minute on Indian Education" (1835) through “a class of interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern—a class of persons Indian in blood and colour but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect,” (Bhabha 1994: 124-25) in other words the mimic men.